StateImpact Oklahoma

3:19 pm

Thu July 16, 2015

Abbot Lawrence Stasyszen of St. Gregory's Monastery traces cracks in the walls of the monk's workshop, which was damaged in a 5.7-magnitude earthquake that struck the nearby city of Prague in November 2011.

Lawmakers have scheduled capitol hearings and oil and gas regulators will soon issue stricter guidelines on disposal wells linked to the shaking. Future earthquakes are a big concern, but one Oklahoma institution is still dealing with the damage one quake caused nearly four years ago.

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St. Gregory’s University is an Oklahoma earthquake icon. When the 5.7-magnitude quake struck near the city of Prague in November 2011, one of the school’s century-old, Tudor Gothic-style towers collapsed. Another started spitting bricks.

The earthquake is Oklahoma’s largest recorded with modern instruments. It’s also the largest earthquake anywhere that scientists have linked to disposal wells used by the oil and gas industry. Two people were injured. None at St. Gregory’s.

Millions of American students don’t have access to high speed internet at home, putting them at an educational disadvantage. On Wednesday, president Barack Obama began his two-day visit to Oklahoma by unveiling a new plan to bring internet service into low income households.

The president was met with applause and introduced himself with the Choctaw greeting “Halito” at Durant High School in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Obama checked off some of the accomplishments under his administration --- like private sector job growth, a stronger housing market and more insured Americans. That, he said, is the good news.

“But I also made it clear when I came into office, even as we’re trying to make sure the entire economy recovers, we also have to pay attention to those communities that all too often have been neglected and fallen behind,” Obama said. “And as part of that, I said, ‘We’re going to do better by our First Americans. We’re going to do better.’”

Law

5:55 am

Thu July 16, 2015

Inmates at California's Chino State Prison exercise in the prison yard in 2010. A proposition that was passed in the state last year reclassified certain crimes, releasing thousands of inmates earlier than had been anticipated.

President Obama has made incarceration reform a White House theme this week. On Monday, he commuted the sentences of 46 mostly nonviolent drug offenders; and on Tuesday, he spoke about reducing the prison population in a speech to the NAACP.

"The United States is home to 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the world's prisoners," Obama said. "Think about that. Our incarceration rate is four times higher than China's."

Here & Now

4:35 pm

Wed July 15, 2015

President Obama addresses attendees at the 106th NAACP national convention on July 14, 2015 in Philadelphia. Obama's speech addressed the unfairness in our criminal justice system and offered ideas for reform. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)

In a speech Tuesday, President Obama called for fixing what he called the “broken system” of criminal justice, which he said sends too many non-violent drug offenders to prison for too long because of Reagan-era mandatory minimum sentencing.

On Monday, Obama commuted the sentences of 46 non-violent drug offenders. In a personal letter to each soon-to-be ex-prisoner, Obama warned them, “it will not be easy” for them once they get out. Thursday, he will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit a federal prison.

President Obama offered a robust defense of the historic deal struck with Iran on its nuclear program, saying it meets the "national security interests of the United States and its allies."

In a more than hourlong news conference, Obama dismissed criticism of the deal, acknowledging that he expects "robust" debate over the agreement in Congress, but urging lawmakers to evaluate "this agreement based on the facts, not on politics, not on posturing."

World Cafe

6:10 pm

Tue July 14, 2015

After starting out in the punk scene, Oklahoma singer-songwriter John Moreland decided it was best to start writing about himself. That attitude, and a new Americana sound, helped lend depth and honesty to his new album, High On Tulsa Heat. Moreland's World Cafe session is one of the most unexpectedly beautiful in a while.

World News

3:01 pm

Tue July 14, 2015

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Philip Hammond and US Secretary of State John Kerry talk prior to a plenary session at the United Nations building in Vienna, Austria July 14, 2015. Iran and six major world powers reached a nuclear deal on Tuesday, capping more than a decade of on-off negotiations with an agreement that could potentially transform the Middle East, and which Israel called an "historic surrender". (JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images)

The landmark deal over Iran’s nuclear program will lift sanctions against the country, which will have economic consequences around the globe.

In terms of oil prices, Iranian officials are trying to get up to a million additional barrels of Iranian oil to the market, in a time when there is already oversupply and low prices. The lifting of sanctions also opens the door to other countries who want to expand their oil industries into Iran.

New images of Pluto have arrived from a NASA space probe, and they're already allowing scientists to update what we know about the dwarf planet — such as its size. NASA's New Horizons probe has traveled more than 3 billion miles to send photos and data about Pluto back to Earth.